


Hero

by bendingwind



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Brief Appearances by Other Companions, F/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-10
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-04-25 18:01:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4970914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bendingwind/pseuds/bendingwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You’re six years old when you pick up a sword for the first time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hero

You’re six years old when you pick up a sword for the first time.

It’s only a small practice sword, not even weighted, but it is intricately carved with decorative runes. It has belonged to a long line of Couslands already.

“See, I told you’d she’d be a swordswoman,” your father says behind you, and you know he is smiling over at your mother.

“Hmph,” your mother says, and that is that.

Your lessons begin the following morning.

***

You’re nine years old and your mother is braiding your hair back from your face in preparation for your first command.

As of today, you are in charge of overseeing the castle kennels.

Of course, you still have to do as Serah Darcey recommends, but your mother has explained, at length, that that is part of a command. You must listen to the advice of people who know more than you, and take it into consideration when you make your decisions.

You’re nine years old and your mother tells you the story of her first command on the Storm Coast and how she came to be known as the Seawolf. She tells you that she trusts you will do as well with the kennels, and if you manage that and still keep up with your lessons in arithmetic, she may allow you to begin working with her on household finance as well.

***

You’re eleven years old and your parents have been invited to court to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Ferelden’s victory over Orlais. You are too young to attend balls, but your brother has a new baby boy and your parents decide that it is acceptable for you to attend with them as long as you leave early.

There are rumors that the king will engage his son to Teryn Loghain’s daughter at the ball, and you cannot think of anything more romantic as you are fitted for a new white gown just for the occasion.

“You must not speak to anyone without your father or I present,” you mother says, as you show her the dress before it is packed away for travel. “The court is not always very kind, even now that we have almost eradicated poisonous Orlesian tradition.”

You obey, but you also sneak back out of your room and manage to watch from a balcony as Prince Cailan kneels before Teryn Loghain’s lovely golden-haired daughter and asks her to marry him.

***

You’re twelve years old, and Fergus’ new wife is fighting with your mother about your lessons with the sword. Oriana worries that you are already too tall, that you will not find a husband with your arms corded with muscle and your legs set far apart for better balance. Your mother prefers that you have the means to keep yourself alive, even if you do not marry young or easily.

Oriana comes to you later, and explains that no one will want you if you are not delicate and beautiful. You love your lessons with the sword, love the feel of a blade slicing through the air and the burn of muscles pushed just far enough, but the memory of the Prince proposing to his beautiful bride echoes hollow in your head, and you love that too.

“Mama got married,” you venture, and Oriana shakes her head.

“You are not as pretty as your mother,” she says, and you bite your lip. Oriana is married, after all, and from Antiva where everything is beautiful and romantic.

The arguments continue for a week until you announce that you have decided to give up your lessons. Your mother protests, and you claim you are no longer interested.

It is a lie.

***

You’re fourteen years old and it is your first summer in the glittering young court of King Cailan and Queen Anora, and you have already fallen in love with a beautiful boy named Thomas who adores your fascination with Ferelden legends and tells you you have stunning eyes and doesn’t mind when you correct his form while watching him in the practice yards.

He’s twenty and looking to marry, and you’re old enough though just barely, and in any case he assures you that you’re very adult for your age. When he kisses you behind the palace kennels, well…

You always thought that falling in love would be hard, a struggle to belong and fit and _cherish_ , but it turns out to be surprisingly simple.

And so you trade more kisses, behind the kennels, on tiny hidden balconies jutting out from ballrooms, out in the green forests barely close enough for the court’s hunting parties. Kissing him is pleasant, and the feel of his searing hands slipping into the half-laced bodice of your dress is something more than merely _pleasant_ , and when he leads you through the gardens and into his suites, you do not say no.

You are fourteen years old and you have always been a quick study, and the art of giving and taking and revelling in pleasure is no different.

You are only fourteen years old when it all falls apart, when the father of another young woman he has seduced--one who had the misfortune to become pregnant--challenges him to a duel, which he wins at the cost of his attendance at court. Unwilling to lose his lofty position in life, he marries a well-positioned widow on whom he has been dancing attendance the very next day.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he says, when you finally catch him alone to ask how he could do this to you. “You’re a younger daughter and barely more than a child. You were just a bit of fun while I found someone to suit me better.”

You’re fourteen and your heart is broken, so you return home and resume your lessons with the sword and breathe a sigh of relief when your blood-course comes and you can finally begin to put him behind you.

***

You’re seventeen years old and you have mastered each of the castle’s various duties that require direction. You can order a well-planned meal as easily as you can disarm most grown men. You are not beautiful, as Oriana despairingly comments from time to time, but you are pleasing enough to look at and you are valuable to your family and your people, which is better.

You are seventeen, and you attend the court for the summer as you have every year since you were of marriageable age, and you watch and learn and smile and study the ways you might protect yourself from these people’s agendas, the way you would study an opponent on the battlefield.

Your parents wanted a scholar and a warrior and a politician. You have done your best to be all of those things for them and more besides.

Bann Drest toasts you from across the room. You will a smile onto your face and make your way to him--it would be nice if you could convince him to lessen the tax on his bridge, for Cousland men only, when next year’s trading season comes.

***

You’re nineteen.

You’re nineteen and there is screaming outside, and the empty husks that once housed people you loved lay in cradles of blood on the floor, and in the distance you can still hear the clash of steel and the shouts of pained men.

You’re nineteen and your family is gone, safe in the Maker’s arms if there is any mercy in this world at all. Their blood stains your boots and you left their bodies behind to rot in the ruins of your home.

You’re nineteen and you have an army of darkspawn with an archdemon at its core facing you. You learn for the first time the feel of blood-soaked leathers chafing your skin, the copper-sweet stink of a battlefield and the taste of black blight-ridden blood.

You’re nineteen and your life has become a nightmare that you can’t seem to wake from.

***

You are nineteen, and you have risen to every challenge presented in your short life, but you are _too young_ and _not enough_ for this task. You have been raised to be in command, but you did not learn to command a group of difficult people who have no reason to follow you and who are only barely united by the desire not to die. You have already proven that you could not live up to expectations, that you could not protect the people you loved.

You do not know how to put a stop to Alistair and Morrigan’s bickering, even though it makes you want to scream and maybe run a sword through the both of them. You do not know if it is safe or fair to take advantage of Leliana, you do not know what to make of the vision she claims to have had. You do not know how to handle Sten’s lingering, confused looks, or his questions about how you can possibly be a woman that echo too closely Oriana’s concerns, once upon a time.

Before you failed to protect her.

It has only been a handful of weeks since Ostagar when you enter the Kinloch Hold and meet Wynne for the first time, but it feels like much longer.

“You’ve done very well, you know,” Wynne says, after the battle, while she helps you wipe off whatever it is that demons have instead of blood in the lake. “You’re young, but you have an exceptional head for tactics and strategy. It has been a long time since I last found myself giving heed to orders issued me in the midst of a battle. It is a shame you were not a mage--we could have used you in the Circle.”

You know Wynne is not right, know that you are failing at this, that you can never be what this world needs to save them from the Blight, but it’s comforting to hear nonetheless.

And things do get easier, after that.

“If the two of you continue bickering, I will turn you both into toads,” Wynne says, mildly, on a day when Alistair and Morrigan are being particularly unbearable.

“You may _try_ if you wish,” Morrigan responds, but she slows and falls behind the group, out of reach of Alistair’s words.

“You know, I don’t think darkspawn bother with toads,” Alistair remarks under his breath to you when he thinks Wynne can’t hear. “Maybe I would _like_ being a toad.”

It startles a laugh out of you and a spark out of Wynne’s staff. Alistair cowers.

Wynne mentions offhand that between your general knowledge of how to run a kitchen (vague, second-hand knowledge inherited from a lifetime of managing Nana) and Leliana’s time working in the chantry’s kitchens, you ought to be able to manage something edible enough. Since Morrigan still refuses to cook and Alistair could burn water, you agree readily, and as you cook together you get to know Leliana better. She tells marvelous stories, and you learn to tell the difference in the timbre of her voice when she is a bard and when she is a servant of the Maker. You come to believe that perhaps she is neither lying nor crazy when she speaks of her vision.

You were always taught that the Maker was gone from the world, but perhaps the chantry sisters do not know everything, as they so rarely look outside of their cloistered palaces.

You realize, gradually, that where you are managing the when and where and how, Wynne is managing the _who_ of this ragtag little band of would-be saviors. It reminds you of the smooth way your mother used to run the castle, breaking up bitterness and disputes with a kind word here and a reprimand there, in a time that already seems almost beyond memory. You never did have a knack for it. You find yourself studying Wynne, as once you studied your mother and even Oriana, because you want to learn this half-magical skill they seemed to share.

You are nineteen, and you are too young for this, but perhaps you can learn to manage.

***

You’re nineteen and you don’t mean to fall in love. You’ve learned your lesson about pretty boys with pretty words and pretty gifts, and a king’s bastard son can only be worse than the regular, run-of-the-mill lothario you’ve thrown off before.

Only, Alistair’s words are hardly pretty but they do make you laugh, and the rose he gives you is wilted and slightly crushed and you think he’s right--it reminds you of you. His words are an endearingly awkward tumble of affection, and his nose has been broken too many times for him to quite be _pretty_ , and… he is _sincere_.

It’s a stupid thing, a foolish thing, when you kiss him beside the fire where anyone could see. Leliana gives a polite cough from her place by the cooking pot, and Wynne is frowning darkly at her staff as she tries to remove darkspawn blood from the grain. But the kiss… the kiss is nice. The kiss is more than nice, and you tell your heart to stop fluttering because you’re only nineteen and you will not let another man hurt you in this way.

He is going to be King of Ferelden, even if he isn’t ready to admit it yet. He may be a disaster, this stable-boy-turned-templar-turned-grey-warden who couldn’t tell a lie to save his life and doesn’t know a member of the nobility outside of the Arl of Redcliffe’s immediate family and… well, you. 

You were not even good enough for the pretty third son of an Arl. You will not be good enough for them to allow you to marry their king.

The deep roads are long and dark and treacherous, the reality of Branka’s betrayal hideous. You turn twenty in these abandoned, forsaken lands, and you do not mention it to your companions. It is not the first time you come close to death, but it is the first time you realize that you will not live to see twenty-one.

You survive the dark roads of the lost dwarven empire, though, and you find that the burden of imminent death makes other things easier. It does not seem to matter so much, now, if you cannot be Alistair’s queen, so long as you can have him while you both have the chance. You invite him into your tent your first night back in the camp, and he is silly and awkward and adorable but he comes willingly enough.

You hope the stories they tell of this, if _they_ live to tell them at all, will say that at least you found love before you died.

He smiles at you in the morning, and whispers that he loves you as you both dress quietly in the pre-dawn light. Only Morrigan is awake to see him emerge from your tent, and she gives you a knowing look that makes you blush to the roots of your hair.

Alistair loves you, and you are going to love him for as long as you have the breath to do so. You do not fear hurting him--the world is hard enough to do that on its own.

***

You are twenty and can’t even begin to imagine why they are giving this decision to _you_ , why anyone would rest the fate of their nation on your fragile shoulders. Of course Alistair must be king, but you cannot bear the thought of the traitor’s daughter ruling alongside him, sharing his bed, and you love him but you do not have faith in his ability to rule alone.

You look up at the balcony and see, of all people, Bann Drest. You once negotiated a trade treaty that favored your holdings with him in the space of an evening. He smiles and nods at you, and you realize… _you_ could do this. You are the youngest and only living Cousland, a poor but old and respected family. You have many allies among the nobility, a small measure of popularity for your fair dealings at court. _You could do this._

You are only twenty and you are too young to marry, but your choices are to ruin Alistair by forcing him into a role he cannot fill or forcing him to wed a wife he cannot love, and so you proclaim him King and engage yourself to him in the same sentence.

You have enough time to hope he won’t be too angry before the hall erupts into cheers and you realize that you have made it happen. You can _keep_ Alistair.

Later, you stumble through an apology for having spoken without consulting him first, and Alistair brushes off your concern with laughter and a kiss. After, there’s a little smile hovering around his mouth that makes you think it might all have been worth it.

***

You’re twenty years old when you go to your death. You accepted Morrigan’s ritual, begged Alistair to undertake it, but your heart no longer remembers how to muster the hope to believe that you will get a happy ending. That you will live through this long night.

You’re twenty years old when you go to your death, and you’re twenty years old when you come out on the other side.

***

You’re twenty years old and the reality of marriage is terrifying and heartbreaking and thrilling and wonderful…

You’re getting married and your mother will not be there to see your wedding day, to tuck stray strands of your messy hair behind your ears. Your father will not tease you about the march up Andraste’s sacred aisle or call you “Pup”. Instead, you are arguing with Eamon about what you will wear to marry his King.

“The people want to see a beautiful bride!”

He is shouting, his face red with rage over the first occasion on which you have denied him.

You try to explain that in a gown, you are just another noble of Ferelden, and not even the people’s beloved Queen Anora at that. In a gown, you are too tall and too muscular and not well-born enough.

In armor you are the Hero of Ferelden.

You may yell some yourself. It has been a long couple of months.

He is well into shouting down your arguments when the shutters of the window above you clatter open.

“Petty court is hard enough to concentrate in without the two of you bickering in the courtyard,” Alistair calls down, “She’s wearing the armor! Your king commands you!”

The shutters slam shut again with a loud clap of wood against stone, and you shouldn’t laugh. It will only make Eamon angrier, and you need him on your side, now more than ever.

One glimpse of his purpling face proves too much, and you lose your battle against a storm of giggles. He stomps away, and you find you are hard-pressed to regret it.

***

You’re twenty-five and it seems a lifetime ago and yesterday that you were named the Princess-Consort of Ferelden. The title no longer rankles as it once did, and the respect you receive is no less than Anora did with the title of Queen. Perhaps it is more, since you are also the Hero of Ferelden and beloved of your people. You have the common touch, they say, which you take to mean that you descend from your golden throne now and again to interact with those that you rule.

Like Anora, though, you have given your land no heirs. 

You knew this could happen. You had suspected, from the first moment you thought of it when you lay with Alistair all those years ago in a hastily-constructed tent, that the taint would make childbearing difficult. Alistair had confirmed it after you declared him king, and you had made a silly joke about how it would not be for lack of trying.

It seems less silly, now.

You ask Alistair about Morrigan and the child, his absent and unseen son, just once.

“Maker knows,” Alistair responds, sleepily. “He probably has tentacles and dragon eyes. Can’t have a demon baby on the throne of Ferelden, anyways.”

You are twenty-five years old and you’ve proven yourself a good ruler, sat beside Alistair as he surpassed all expectations as a surprisingly wise and generous king. You have made the kingdom stable, prosperous even, in the wake of devastation. The south has not yet fully recovered, but they are no longer so reliant on your aid, and they will be on their feet again soon enough. You have secured the coast and re-taken two islands that Antiva had quietly invaded during the Blight. Your ports are open and busy, your coffers full with the taxes you extract on foreign goods. You have improved life for the elves residing in Ferelden’s alienages, and though you could not exactly call their situation stable, it may one day be.

You are twenty-five years old and you have failed your kingdom in only one way, but you have many years ahead of you yet.

And failure to produce an heir will _certainly_ not be for lack of trying, you think with a smile as you nudge your sleeping husband’s shoulder.

***

You’re twenty-eight years old and you’ve lost four unborn children to your tainted blood.

You try not to think about it often. You will not live with despair.

Your kingdom is stable, your husband is more than capable of managing, but there is talk among the nobility of calling a Landsmeet to force your husband to set you aside for a more fertile bride. You are popular among the people, and even well-liked by the nobility, but the matter of an heir has always surpassed personal feelings.

And so you set your affairs in order, formally pick up your sword once again, and set out to seek a cure for the taint. In this vast world you live in, there must be some means of cleansing the blight from your blood, of giving yourself and Alistair a chance at a half-normal life.

You seek out Morrigan first, as you did the year after the defeat of the archdemon, but this time you are not successful. You are headed to the Orlesian court following rumors of a mysterious witch advising the empress when a missive from Leliana reaches you. It is some months old, and you have no clue how she knew to find you, but it contains information on a Grey Warden dismissed from the order nearly thirty years ago after it was determined that she was no longer tainted and a new Joining would not take.

You have heard of her before, to your surprise. Wynne wrote about her, rather unflatteringly, years ago. It is not difficult to locate the Grand Enchanter, though it is a little more difficult to get an informal audience with her. Despite your precautions, and despite being presented to her as a simple Grey Warden, she rises when you enter the room.

“Your Highness,” she greets, very formally. At your surprised look, she continues, “I’m afraid that I keep rather closer tabs on the royalty of Thedas than you seem to have anticipated. In particular, Duncan wrote to me of your joining before his death. I was surprised that a noblewoman would give up her pampered life for such a position, but you seem to have returned to that life as soon as possible.”

You bristle, because that’s unfair. You did not ask to become a Grey Warden, and your life has never been what you might call _pampered_. 

She smiles when she sees your face.

“I have offended; I apologize. But what reason could you have to visit an old enchanter so quietly, your highness?”

You bite back harsh words directed at this woman who reminds you so much of Wynne, and yet lacks all of Wynne’s best qualities. You have fended off worse political foes with a smile and venom couched in polite phrases.

She watches you with hooded eyes as you explain that you are seeking a cure to this corruption in your blood, and you hope she will share any knowledge she might have of how she came to be cleansed.

“The cure,” she says, after a time, “What use have you for it? Will you use it to eradicate the Grey Wardens, as my superior once feared I would? Or will you use it only for yourself?”

You will use it for yourself and Alistair. You will offer it to those who do not wish to embark on the Calling, who wish to retire and train new recruits. You seek it only for the security of your kingdom and the life of your husband and yourself, not because you wish to destroy anything. It is more difficult to explain this to her than you anticipated it would be, but she seems to understand.

She tells you her story then, weaving words that tell a great deal of the cure she still does not quite understand, and that omit a great deal more. You wonder if the secrets she is keeping are important; you wonder if you should push to discover what they may be.

In the end, you thank her politely, and make to take your leave.

“Is he… is Alistair happy?” she asks, quietly, before you reach the door.

You pause, thinking on how her story had carefully evaded mention of King Maric’s role in the expedition, how she had not spoken of the year between her cure and her departure for the Circle. The oldest and saddest sort of secret, then.

If you survive this, perhaps you can give her a happy ending.

“He is,” you say, because she does not need to hear of your sorrows and Alistair’s worries and how hard some of the years of his life have been. Not now.

You give her a slight bow before you depart, this time.

***

You are twenty-nine years old and the stability of the world you worked to save is dissolving around you. You are in the ridged mountains west of the Anderfels when you first hear that the mages have finally revolted, and it seems like the next day that you hear that the sky has been ripped open, exposed to the Fade. You leave immediately for Ferelden, but are intercepted at the border with Orlais by a letter:

_My darling,_

_We are fine here. I have allowed the survivors of the Circle refuge at Redcliffe. Those Templars who do not agree with my decision have been permitted to leave the kingdom. You are only needed here in the way that you are always needed here, by my side--keep looking. Ferelden will be waiting when you find what you are searching for._

_(I think I preferred the Darkspawn to all this madness, come to think of it.)_

_All my love,  
A._

Another letter, coded in an old familiar hand, arrives before you can make up your mind.

_Everything under control. Have formed an Inquisition to address this new great danger. Anything you might know about an entity known as Corypheus would be of great assistance. Do not return--if all goes poorly and my worst fears come to pass, we may have need of a hero who has been sheltered from the fallout of this great tragedy._

_I will do what I can to protect your husband and your kingdom in your absence._

_Be well._

_Nightingale_

You take the time to scribble out a formal letter of explanation to the Inquisitor, less polished for your lack of recent practice, and you return to the cold, distant mountains to seek your cure. You have never been one to spend much time at the feet of the Maker, but you find yourself sending up a prayer most evenings that those you love may remain safe.

***

You are thirty-two when you find it. You are thirty-two and have spent four years of your life in the godforsaken wilderness west of the Anderfels trying to find a way to remain with Alistair. You have not heard from him for the last of those years, and you guide your horse wearily down the road to Denerim knowing you may not be returning home.

There is, at least, no gossip of a new bride in the palace in any of the inns you stop at along the way. You hope this means that Alistair still has not been forced to set you aside for a younger queen able to give him an heir.

In Denerim, you stop at another inn despite the proximity of your home and your king. They do not recognize you, but that is for the best--your coin is all you need here. You have a bath drawn and send the maid off to buy a gown appropriate for court from the market.

In the end it requires two separate baths to scrub off the dirt that has burrowed into your skin over the last year. You have cut your hair short again, but the maid manages to make it presentable enough.

You hardly recognize yourself in the mirror, clean and wearing a formal gown, with your hair twisted elegantly up. You have learned over the years that there are more kinds of armor than those made from dragonbone and steel; for some occasions, a well-selected gown is more powerful than a sword.

The groom has somehow made your tired, faithful warhorse gleam, and he prances proudly, years lifted from his powerful frame. You smile and sneak him an apple, and then you depart for the palace.

You wonder if Alistair still loves you, after all this time.

***

You are thirty-three when they call for the vote you feared for so long, all those years ago. The timing is poor on their part. It is set for the fall equinox, and you do not return from the Summer Palace you have been visiting until the night before the Landsmeet.

“ _Should_ we give them a warning?” Alistair asks, and you grin and kiss his cheek.

“You’re right,” he agrees to your unspoken sentiment. “Waaay funnier if we just walk in.”

You laugh, and the next day you hold his hand as you walk into the Landsmeet side-by-side, your belly before you. It takes a moment, but the great hall rumbles itself into a hush.

“Before we proceed,” Alistair says, and you know that to them he will sound very serious, but you can hear the thread of amusement, of barely-held-back laughter, in his voice. “I would like to make an announcement that my wife is expecting a child, and that we hope to present you with the long-anticipated heir to the throne in the coming months. We hope that you will join us in a celebration at the conclusion of this Landsmeet to rejoice with us in our news.”

The hall is absolutely silent. You are old enough now, at least, to control the violent urge to giggle, but you suspect that you are not quite managing to suppress your grin.

After a pause, your husband clears his throat beside you. “Arlessa Isolde, if you would proceed with the matter over which you have called this Landsmeet?”

Her mouth falls open, and for a moment you see that she is absolutely speechless. When she does not speak, you calmly suggest that perhaps the need for this Landsmeet was not so dire as had been indicated, and maybe your nobles would like to retire to their quarters. The celebration for the anticipated heir can certainly take place tonight, and those who wish may depart in the morning.

Silently, she nods, and you leave with your husband before the nobles can begin to drift in your direction with their congratulations and their invasive questions. Time enough for that, later. 

You allow yourself to laugh and joke with Alistair about the expressions on their faces only after you have left them well out of earshot.

***

You are thirty-nine years old and your daughter is six when she picks up her first practice sword. It is small and light and beautifully carved where is is not worn from small, grubby hands.

You grin at your husband, an I-told-you-so clear in your eyes.

“Well _I’m_ not surprised,” he says, and he wraps his arms around you.

You nod into him, and turn to look at your daughter again. She will be strong and beautiful and all the things you were not, and she will not have to live your nightmares if you have any power in your body to prevent it.

She starts her lessons in the morning.


End file.
